


venus in sagittarius

by fatal



Series: venus 金星 planet of love [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friends With Benefits, M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Time Skip, kunimi akira pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24234124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatal/pseuds/fatal
Summary: the body is the only conduit for intimacy you’ve ever cared to understand.(ten reasons to keep casually hooking up with the boy at the tail end of his decade-long coronation.)
Relationships: Kageyama Tobio/Kunimi Akira, past kunimi akira/sakusa kiyoomi
Series: venus 金星 planet of love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1705384
Comments: 56
Kudos: 503





	venus in sagittarius

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. [min](https://twitter.com/ajuyikes) drew [kunikage in the blue party scene](https://twitter.com/ajuyikes/status/1258634946853269505?s=20) from venus in taurus! + [venus in sag scenes!](https://twitter.com/ajuyikes/status/1265132259801104385)  
> 2\. [ayan](https://twitter.com/koraiho) made this [beautiful knkg playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ADgKryOucjIT67j8putW7?si=S_FOn227Q9KGAmSr5WFExg)!  
> 3\. [slow dancing](https://twitter.com/iwadescence/status/1287550351344730113)  
> 4\. [general songs i listened to while writing venus in sag](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3feDvbmpBGpBkTGRnsDx67?si=_5drtorvRz2GZNlizczAJA)  
> cw: religious references (7), mild sexual content (7, 10), smoking (9) 
> 
> also: [they dance to this yumi arai song in this fic](https://open.spotify.com/track/1TVytW8KF6lq6yFtJze61w?si=lf0HWWd2TWiwAd310h59xQ) ♡

_What can you know about a person? They shift_  
_in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once._

_-Richard Siken, "Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light"_

_1\. One-night stands with strangers you meet at clubs and bars are disgusting._

* * *

An ex of Akira once told him he only lets himself want things in increments.

A bowl of rice and _Tamagoyaki_ for breakfast. No more than one smooth cylinder of Gatsby hair product, the purple one advertising a _casual messy_ look. ¥197 toilet paper. No more than eighteen hours in a day spent awake. The pack of Peace cigarettes in his inner coat pocket, saved to be plucked out only when drunk. An hour of nakedness, before he goes to pick his shirt off the floor and pull it over his head again.

The person who told him this also found it all incredibly ironic, because Kunimi Akira hardly seemed like one for things like self-discipline.

“Self-discipline’s not the same as self-preservation,” was all Akira could say in return.

He knows he can’t contain everything within the walls of an increment. Not rolling lavender fields, or prayers to the Gods, or the bottomless jewel blue of an ocean. So Akira never books a flight to Hokkaido. He visits shrines sparingly. In summer, he doesn’t go swimming.

✶

When Akira kisses Kageyama Tobio on the mouth in Shibuya, he figures he could justify it as being equivalent to lighting a cigarette while drunk. Under sweeping pink lights, Kageyama bares a slice of his chest beneath a white dress shirt, buttons nearly undone to his stomach. _Ah, Hinata told me to wear it like this,_ Kageyama tells him when he catches him looking, flushing.

 _Oh. Oh, take that name out of your mouth. Say mine instead,_ Akira does not say, tipsy on the burn that comes after things like dancing and whiskey and desire.

Then he finds himself stumbling into a room washed in blue, the whole time looking into much bluer eyes. For maybe half a second, Akira pulls back from the white line of a body if only to remind himself, quietly, _he is not an ocean._

Can the wanting that makes up a one-night stand fold itself into the capsule of an increment? Is a one-night stand still a one-night stand if it unfurls, helpless, into repeating nights of tangled black hair against white pillowcases and long legs pressed in parallel? Soft necks and warm mouths and the feeling, sometimes, of being fifty feet underwater?

But, whatever. Akira doesn’t let himself dwell for more than an increment, either.

* * *

_2\. Finding people to date through apps and mixers is a nuisance._

* * *

Kunimi Akira does not meet Sakusa Kiyoomi at a mixer, or on Tinder.

He meets him in college. Akira is in first year, studying finances; Sakusa is in second.

They study in the same corner of the library, the one decorated with floor plants and signs cautioning no noise! in bold, red font. Akira takes up a table meant for four, spreading out his books and supplies far enough to discourage anyone else from sitting with him. He spends hours there with his headphones on, cycling between calculus revision, economics papers, and funny pictures of cats from Kindaichi.

Sakusa—then only catalogued in Akira’s head as _That Face Mask Boy_ —sits at the table beside his table. He, too, scatters his things throughout a table meant for four, but there’s more of an order to it. He first lays out a thin, white sheet over the table—is that a tablecloth? Who drags a tablecloth around campus?

He pulls out his laptop. Notebooks and textbooks come next, positioned above the laptop in a tidy row. Then out comes the 0.38 Muji pens, the pale green Zebra Mildliner, and the plain, white square of sticky notes. Always evenly aligned, almost always in that order.

Sakusa keeps a good foot of distance between himself and everyone else, going lengths to maneuver whenever leaving his post. His hands stay folded in his lap, unfolding only to touch things when absolutely needed. With a portable spray and a microfibre cloth, he disinfects his keyboard and the covers of his books before packing up and heading out.

Akira’s looked at him long enough to know all of this. Sometimes he wonders if Sakusa ever looks at him, too. Probably not. But there’s something sexy, Akira thinks at the time, about the way Sakusa shuts the world out.

A month and a half into their routine, Akira watches Sakusa frown and squeeze at an empty hand sanitizer bottle. Akira fishes out a bottle of _Tepika Gel_ from his own bag, cap still sealed with plastic at the top. Wordlessly, he holds it out in Sakusa’s direction.

Sakusa looks at him for the first time—at least, the first time Akira’s noticed. He takes the bottle from Akira with all the ease of reaching toward the flared end of a live-wire. His lips don’t move once behind his paper mask.

Another month and a half passes. They start sitting at the same table. Akira’s things get permission to rest against Sakusa’s tablecloth.

  
✶

Kunimi Akira does not meet Kageyama Tobio at a mixer, or on Tinder.

He meets him in middle school, standing in line at the gleaming centre of Kitagawa Daiichi’s gymnasium. It’s a quiet exchange of names and the shortest kind of glance. But they meet a second time that week, maybe, when Kageyama tosses a ball that Akira spikes clean onto the other side of the court. Akira doesn’t know what to make of the strange, sharp look the boy shoots him, after. He wonders if it’s resentment. In second year, Akira watches Kageyama contort his face the way he does before he yells at him and Akira decides that yes, it must have been resentment, after all.

Three years later, Akira meets Kageyama on opposite sides of the net during a practice match against Karasuno. When Kageyama’s hitters don’t get the point he does not raise his voice, or scowl, or curl both his hands into fists. This boy seems kinder. Maybe the small, excitable teammate with orange hair beside him is more deserving of his kindness. The thought is like ice sliding down Akira’s back.

Sixteen and still growing, Akira meets another boy outside the gymnasium, dark-haired and blue-eyed like all the ones before. But now he looks at Akira with a sort of shy expression.

Akira didn’t think his face could look like that, before.

There are no apologies, least not in any certain terms. But in time, there are text messages and train tracks and hushed conversations about whatever happened three, four years ago. There are milk boxes from vending machines traded for salted caramel ice cream and pink Miyagi sunsets and volleyball, always volleyball.

Then there’s _Kageyama and Kindaichi and Kunimi_ , in the same breath like one noun. There’s the living room carpet against the backs of three boys who re-catalogue the tonal shifts in each other’s language. They re-learn the quiet, minute differences between _I’m sleepy_ and _a girl rejected me today_ and _I’m not ready to talk about it yet._ And _help me I’m failing English again._ And _yes._ And _please._ And _run the trails of Tsutsujigaoka Park with me, yes I know it’s six in the morning. Come and run with me anyway._

Kunimi Akira—

Meets Kageyama, in the _departures_ aisle of Haneda Airport. This time, Kageyama’s got uneven bangs and a ticket to Rio and the unsaid expectation of a nation on his shoulders. Above the red collar of his _Team Japan_ windbreaker is a thin, silver chain. It’s identical to the one Akira bought a different boy, in December. They’ll un-know each other again soon enough, Akira knows, so he lets himself look. Even when the boy won’t look at him back.

Meets him, under plum trees lining the edges of _Hamarikyu_ Gardens. Under rustic lightbulbs dangling from ceilings of run-down _Izakayas_ along _Omoide Yokocho’s_ alleyways. Beneath the perpetual outline of Tokyo Tower, sprouting up in the distance behind Kageyama’s head just like another crown.

He—hasn’t quite stopped meeting Kageyama. Akira slouches against the wooden back of a bench in Shiba park and yawns into a hand. His other hand taps against a closed, paper take-out box of pork curry on rice. Akira is waiting to meet him, still. After all this time. After no time at all.

* * *

_3\. Getting to know an entirely new person, in general, is exhausting._

* * *

During his time with Sakusa, Kunimi learns to recognize intimacy in the most random things.

Using his microfibre cloth to sanitize your laptop keyboard right after his own? Intimacy. Laying out an impossibly crinkle-free flyer with the date and time of an upcoming home game on your side of the table without meeting your eyes or saying a word? Intimacy. Sitting beside you in the waiting room after he’d booked your flu shot on the same day as his without telling you until the morning of? Intimacy. Unfortunately.

Outside their college gymnasium, Sakusa stands very still while Akira kisses him for the first time through his face mask. By now, Akira’s known him long enough to recognize that his stillness, too, is intimacy.

Akira thinks it’s kind of funny. He’s teased Sakusa like this before because he’s sometimes insufferable, bringing his hand a precarious centimetre away from Sakusa’s jaw, lips pursed as he tilts his head closer. Sakusa usually shoves him away, or steps out of the way, or scowls menacingly until Akira backs off with a laugh. But one day Sakusa doesn’t shove, or flinch, or tremble, and curiosity pulls the two of them closer, until—

Intimacy: the way Sakusa no longer averts his eyes when Akira brings his face close. The way his hands stop shaking whenever Akira dips into his once-untouchable square metre of personal space. And especially, especially the way he rids his body of verbs—leaving not even the smallest shove, or flinch, or tremble—when Akira finally kisses the paper of his mask.

And so Sakusa quietly adds Kunimi Akira to the very short list of things he allows himself to touch.

✶

After so many years, Akira almost didn’t think there could be more to learn about Kageyama. At least, he thought there’d be a limit. But then Kageyama goes and does something new again for Akira to add to that growing list at the back of his mind titled _Things and More Things About Kageyama Tobio_.

Akira wakes up to heavy breathing beside him and and learns that Kageyama gets nightmares, sometimes. His grogginess goes away after shaking Kageyama awake with a gentle hand. He watches the fear on his face dissolve. He’d yet to see him look like this.

Akira had seen Kageyama scared and anxious in middle school, yes. But he hadn’t stayed around long enough, back then, to watch that fear slink away. How it falls like a curtain for something more serene. Akira hadn’t seen Kageyama _relieved_. And relieved to see _him_ , of all things.

A week after, Akira learns that passing by other people’s dogs on the sidewalk makes Kageyama sad. _They don’t like me,_ Kageyama sighs wistfully. His head tilts forward, bangs falling over his eyes. His mouth pouts. It’s ridiculous and dramatic and maybe a little cute. Akira looks up from the retreating Shiba Inu to Kageyama’s face and wants, suddenly, to kiss the pout off his mouth.

So he does. Akira laughs at Kageyama’s flustered face and says he’ll just get him a stuffed dog today, _okay, so stop looking so mopey_.

And now—

“I didn’t know you knew how to cook,” Akira says, leaning back against Kageyama’s kitchen counter. Yumi Arai’s _COBALT HOUR_ LP plays on from a record player by the window. Absently tapping a finger to its rhythms, Akira watches Kageyama thinly slice an onion over a wooden cutting board.

“It’s just _Oyakodon_ ,” Kageyama mumbles. He finishes cutting the onion and moves on to chop _mitsuba_. “Anyway, my parents would come home late most nights. I usually made myself dinner.”

Akira hums. All the windows in Kageyama’s apartment have the blinds pulled up, but it’s already dark out. The only light in the room flickers from one fluorescent lightbulb overhead, the rest beside it burnt out. Akira watches its weak yellow light trace haloes onto the black of Kageyama’s hair.

When he’s done with the _mitsuba_ , Kageyama fills a pot with water from the tap and sets it on the stove to boil. Akira walks up behind Kageyama, still focused on the stove, and buries his face in the crook of his neck. His arms wrap easy around Kageyama’s middle.

“Kageyama, I like this song,” Akira murmurs into warm skin, and he feels Kageyama go still against him. “ _Nani Mo Kikanaide_. Come here a moment.”

“Kunimi,” Kageyama says, quiet, but Akira’s already turning him around by his hips so they face each other. Akira moves back a step, fingers fluttering at Kageyama’s waist to curl around the belt loops of his jeans. Eyes glinting with some mischief, Akira tugs on the loops to pull Kageyama closer.

Kageyama huffs out an exasperated breath, but there’s a light pink dusting on his cheeks. “What are you doing, Kunimi?”

“Seducing you,” Akira says, low and coy, but he’s smiling cheekily. “Mm. Follow my lead.” Akira takes Kageyama’s hand and guides it to his own waist, then moves to gently press the small of his back. Akira takes Kageyama’s other hand, too, and raises them together.

Akira’s breath fans across Kageyama’s ear. He smirks. “You’re not pulling away.”

“Shut up.” Kageyama glares at him, but he follows Akira’s motions anyway.

The two of them step in time to the song’s piano chords, hips slow in their sway.

“I’m blaming you if my kitchen burns down.”

“You’re boiling _water,_ Kageyama.” Akira snorts lightly, shaking his head. “Relax.”

They move in small circles around the kitchen. The water boils on in its pot from the stove. There’s a swelling of violins mid-song, and Akira playfully raises their interlinked hands to twirl Kageyama around. Kageyama actually laughs a little. It makes Akira want to laugh, too. He presses Kageyama a little closer with the hand on his back.

“Song’s pretty,” Kageyama murmurs, and their noses brush briefly. “Can see why you like it.” They hold eye contact for a moment, swaying in time to Yumi Arai’s melancholic vocals, before Kageyama’s eyes flutter closed.

At some point they switch leads. One of Kageyama’s hands remain firm over Akira’s hip, the other one light on Akira’s back. Akira props an elbow on Kageyama’s shoulder and runs his fingers along a dark bed of hair. His free hand lies flat against Kageyama’s chest.

Akira wonders again as they dance, about the endless learning that comes with knowing Kageyama Tobio. Maybe there’s no end to learning a body that’s constantly changing.

And Kageyama’s changed a lot, since high school. For one, he’s started parting his hair down the middle, the way Akira used to. He’s taller. His back is broader. His arms are corded with rivers of muscle.

Kageyama’s so much stronger, now, but still he holds Akira’s waist like he’s afraid he might break him. It’s one of those moments where Akira almost feels like a glass thing, when Kageyama touches him. Or whatever else might dissipate under a hand, should you press on it too hard or too long, like dew.

There are other things, too, Akira’s learned of Kageyama’s body, there before but only newly added to the Kageyama in Akira’s memory. Like the coordinates of certain beauty marks. Akira likes to press his mouth to them, scattered like black pollen seeds over his back, his wrist, his ankle, his thigh.

A night together becomes another lesson in memorizing the sensitive parts of Kageyama’s body. Neck, sides, stomach. He knows the way his body sounds now, long and sweet from the back of his throat, when Akira grazes these parts with his teeth.

Briefly, Kunimi wonders if anyone’s watching them dance through the windows. How easy it would be, to mistake them for two boys in love.

Kageyama surprises him, then, by closing what little distance is left to kiss Akira on the mouth. Akira stumbles back a little, and Kageyama immediately flutters his eyes open.

“Ah, sorry.” Kageyama averts his gaze, but his hand remains on Akira’s back. Still gentle. “Got carried away.”

“No, don’t apologize,” Akira murmurs, and he steps forward to close their distance again. Akira presses one of his hands against the back of Kageyama’s head and leans in for another kiss, deeper than before. Akira licks once past his lips, teasing, and grins a little when he feels the stutter in Kageyama's breath on his mouth. “This kind of thing’s allowed between us, now. Remember?”

Kageyama still won’t meet his eyes. He breathes something out near the end of the song, soft enough for Akira to barely catch it.

The water’s almost done boiling, now. The vinyl turns to a different song. There’s a distinct feeling, maybe, of having just been woken from a spell. Two boys in a kitchen reluctantly untangle, bodies moving to draw away.

_What are you doing to me, Akira._

* * *

_4\. Anyone could be a human trafficker. We see each other so regularly anyway, and neither of us are human traffickers._

* * *

Akira likes many things about Sakusa Kiyoomi. For one thing, he likes that he’s not a human trafficker. He likes that his hair and pillowcases smell like lavender. Likes that Sakusa’s quiet but also knows what he wants immediately, and won’t delay saying it outright. Likes that Sakusa is handsome. Akira can look, and look, and look at him without ever getting bored.

He likes that Sakusa has strange ways of showing affection. When Akira learns to recognize them, he realizes that his own ways aren’t all that different, really. So Akira quietly treasures the sanitized belongings. The extra packet of face masks. The small touches that flutter behind Akira’s neck, brief and faint enough to so easily have been just a trick of imagination.

Sometimes Akira wakes up feeling like he’s missing something important. Sometimes he watches Sakusa play volleyball and it makes the feeling go away.

Existing beside Sakusa comes easy. After spending a full day with him, once, Akira tips his head up to the sky and startles at its darkness. Had that much time passed by, already?

✶

Despite what he’d told Kageyama, Akira has yet to brag to anyone about his hook-ups with an Olympic athlete. Not even Kindaichi. But he didn’t have to tell Kindaichi, apparently.

The three of them meet up to get donburi for lunch together. Before anyone opens a mouth to speak, Kindaichi shifts a quick, wary glance between Akira and Kageyama and takes a seat across from them.

Akira isn’t surprised. After all, Kindaichi’s known both of them since middle school. He’s spent all these years learning to attune to them. Equally attuned to Kindaichi, Akira suspects he’ll try to play observer. So he observes Kindaichi back.

Mid-meal, Akira lets Kindaichi watch him smooth over Kageyama’s inner wrist with a thumb to get his attention. Lets him watch, when Akira later extends a light hand to tuck a tuft of Kageyama’s hair behind his ear. Invites him to watch, as Akira turns to make Kageyama blush inexplicably with only the weapon of a brief, shared look.

Before Akira leans in to whisper in Kageyama’s ear, he checks his periphery vision to be certain that, yes, Kindaichi’s eyes haven’t left them yet. Kindaichi’s still looking for some kind of signal, Akira can tell, in the way his and Kageyama’s heads bow low beside each other. A small smirk tugs the corner of Akira’s mouth. He leans in a little more to graze the shell of Kageyama’s ear with a skirting edge of teeth.

There’s a horrified gasp across from them, and Kageyama’s head whips up like he just remembered, oh, right, Kindaichi’s still here. Kindaichi and Kageyama stare wordlessly at each other, both of them wide-eyed. Akira can’t help but let out a hand-muffled laugh at the expense of both of them.

Kageyama mumbles something about going to use the washroom before getting up and fleeing away. Then it’s just Kindaichi and Akira and various bowls of donburi between the two of them—one of them still shaken, the other just amused.

“You two,” Kindaichi looks quick between Akira at the table and Kageyama’s departing form. His eyes are wide. “The two of you are. Um.”

“Fucking?”

“You didn’t have to do that.” Kindaichi’s face is very red. “You could have just, I don’t know, texted me the news. Like a normal person. But congrats, I guess.”

“Are you surprised?” Akira folds his arms across his chest and leans back in his seat.

“No, It’s not that. Well, it’s not like I _expected_ it,” Kindaichi rubs at the back of his neck, still looking sheepish. “But I’m friends with you both. I have eyes, you know.”

“Okay. And?” Akira holds his gaze, expectant. He knows there’s more Kindaichi wants to say.

“But—doesn’t it suck? Oh, hah—“

“Does _what_ suck?”

“You know. He’s going overseas next year, man.” Kindaichi frowns. “So the timing of your, um, thing with Kageyama kinda sucks. Did that massive brain of yours suddenly forget he’s leaving?”

They both knew Akira is not the kind of person to suddenly forget. It goes unspoken between the two of them.

“He’s going overseas. So what?” Akira raises an eyebrow, a little impatient, now. “It’s just sex, Kindaichi. It’s not like it’s anything serious.”

Kindaichi studies him a long moment, expression bewildered. But soon enough, the surprise drains away from Kindaichi’s face. It gets replaced with something like concerned, tired epiphany. Or resignation, maybe. Akira’s not too sure, but not because Kindaichi ever tries to hide what he’s thinking—quite the opposite.

Kindaichi bares everything on his face, each minuscule detail and shift. It gets tiring, translating all of it.

“Oh. You started this _because_ he’s going overseas.” Kindaichi doesn’t say it like a question, or an accusation. He says it plain, like a fact.

“Why would I do that.” Akira glares flatly, but Kindaichi continues, suddenly carrying with him none of his flustered state from earlier.

“I don’t know. It’s a limitation. You like those.”

“A limitation on what?”

“Oh, lots of things, Kunimi. You take calculus. You’ll figure it out.”

Akira frowns. “I won’t even try decoding you right now.”

“Out of the two of us, we both know it’s not _me_ who needs decoding.” Kindaichi shrugs. It’s definitely resignation, now.

“Ah.”

Then it’s Kindaichi’s turn to smirk a little. “But whatever, who am I to judge? It’s not my asshole, man.”

“Kindaichi. Shut _up.”_

Truthfully, Akira isn’t as close with Kindaichi now as he was when they were 12, 15, 17. It’s hard not to be, when Kindaichi’s usually all the way in Saitama.

Their interests don’t align so much anymore, either. These days Kindaichi talks in spades about some boy from Tokyo named Wataru Onaga, who he sees very regularly. Apparently Onaga’s his physics classmate, fellow middle blocker with the Tamaden Elephants, _and_ soon-to-be co-worker at some electrical company in Saitama. Sometimes Kindaichi mentions him and Akira sees just a little bit of what the two of them used to be.

Just a little, but not exactly. There’s a new vibrancy in his expression and tone when he speaks about Onaga that makes Akira raise an eyebrow, some days. But it also makes him smile.

Akira looks at Kindaichi now, doubled over across from him and snickering freely. He used to cover his laughter behind a loose fist, back in high school, but now his hands dance around him like they’re laughing, too. It’s another thing about him changed, amongst other things—like his 700 yen undercut, and his newfound tendency to tease, and the way his knee stops shaking under the table.

It’s not all bad, the newness of things.

* * *

_5\. It’s convenient._

* * *

But out of everything Akira likes about Sakusa, what he likes the most is this:

Sakusa is unknowable. It’s convenient. It lets Akira get away with being unknowable, too.

“You don’t have to touch me like that,” Sakusa tells Akira, once.

He says it while Akira’s hands wander above him through his clothes. Akira’s sheets smell clean, like lemon detergent. Sakusa turns his head and presses his cheek to its scent.

“Like what?” Akira withdraws his hands from Sakusa’s sides, frowning. “Careful, you mean?”

“Not careful.” There’s a twist to his mouth Akira can’t decipher. There are many things about Sakusa that Akira can’t decipher.

When Sakusa does hand out keys, Akira lines them up in the back of his mind, neat and tidy. Akira hands out his in turn. There’s a kind of safety in the curtness of the line-up, in the way there aren’t so many keys. Only enough of them to measure.

“Then what?”

✶

When Akira is with Kageyama, he does not think about leaving. He doesn’t think about things like overseas, or Italy, or the Pacific Ocean.

Akira fixates, instead, on the whiskey that spills over Kageyama’s wrist.

“Ah, sorry,” Kageyama mumbles, turning the glass he’d knocked over upright again. He pushes it more safely away from himself, until it’s flanked by two small, half-finished dishes of _takowasa_ and salted edamame.

Kageyama rolls up his sleeve and raises the wrist above him. The wet patch of skin glistens off the glow of dim lanterns lining the _Izakaya’s_ ceiling. There’s a small beauty mark at the centre, under the sheen of whiskey, that always makes Akira feel hot all over. Akira drinks up the surprise on Kageyama’s face when he leans forward to grip the raised, stained wrist. He draws it toward himself.

The Pacific Ocean’s not in front of Akira. Italy’s not in front of him.

Kageyama’s wrist, pale and sticky with alcohol, is in front of him and near enough for Akira to make out each small protrusion of bone, each faint, blue vein. It’s near enough to taste.

Akira brings the veins to his mouth. Without breaking eye contact, he licks whiskey off the beauty mark with the pink flat of his tongue. Its taste is sweet and burning.

Akira doesn’t think about what Kindaichi said the other day. He doesn’t think about words like _limitations._ He thinks, instead, about all the ways Kageyama’s hands laugh in the face of such things. In court, Kageyama’s fingers are elegant and deliberate in the motions of a set. His palms unfurl power in the hitting of a serve. Akira watches Kageyama play and thinks about the impossibility of bounds to the talent and strength of his hands.

But now, Kageyama’s hands shake. Akira likes to think it’s his fault, that maybe he can be Kageyama’s only bound. That his mouth can render the god of him graceless and weak.

“Kunimi,” Kageyama murmurs, unsteady. “Someone might see us.” Still, he doesn’t pull away.

Akira’s only response is to lick up from the delicate skin of the wrist, until his tongue presses against the centre of Kageyama’s palm. He sweeps up to follow its rough network of rivers. Akira’s own thumb draws heavy circles onto the inside of Kageyama’s wrist while his mouth works.

Akira does not catalogue the months, or weeks, or days leading up to a departure. He doesn’t record-keep the numbers that come with things like time or timezones or miles, and miles, and miles. But he catalogues the tremble in Kageyama’s wrist, and the minute dilation of blue eyes, and the tactile quickening of a pulse. Proof of a heart thumps soft against Akira’s thumb.

Kageyama gasps low, and Akira smiles against calloused skin. Lit up with sudden warmth, Akira licks up Kageyama’s pointer finger, pausing to press short kisses to the knuckles, and neatly folds the length of it into his mouth. He keeps his eyes on Kageyama’s.

“Kunimi,” Kageyama breathes out, gaze flickering between Akira’s eyes and his mouth before he twists his head around. But they’re at a less-frequented Izakaya, and the few others there are drunk or lost in their own conversations.

It’s easy enough for Akira to release the finger from his lips, bow his head slightly to look at Kageyama through dark lashes, and say, “Shh, it’s just us.”

It always feels like it’s just them, anyway, when it’s Akira and Kageyama. Under the night and the glow of the lanterns, each cubic centimetre of space between his skin and Kageyama’s weighs like a limitation.

* * *

_6\. Our apartments are a little far from each other, but I wouldn’t mind spending the night in your Olympic-salary-worthy high rise. This might be a surprise to you, but I’ve always wanted to wake up to a bird’s eye view of Tokyo, sunlight streaming in and warming my face through floor-to-ceiling windows._

* * *

“Not careful.”

“Then what?”

Sakusa doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he says, “Sometimes I don’t feel like a person. When you touch me.”

Akira lowers his head, eyes narrowed. “So you don’t feel like a person, right now?” He brings a finger to Sakusa’s left hip. Drags a slow line to the alcove where it meets his thigh. “What do you feel like, then?” Akira doesn’t miss the way Sakusa bites his lip at the slow motions of his finger.

“When you touch me,” Sakusa starts, then pauses again, tone remaining plain despite the flush on his cheeks. “I feel wanted the way a lab rat feels wanted. In a calculated way. Or you’ve had to calculate me to death, before you let yourself want me.”

“That,” Akira says, then huffs out a sigh. “Makes no fucking sense.” Still, Akira’s hands keep moving almost without thought, drawing little rivers onto the black of his jeans. Even through Sakusa’s clothes, Akira’s touch starts to take all of his words and trades them for unsteady exhales.

“I want you,” Akira says after a moment, voice going soft in a way he rarely lets it. On a whim, he brings a light hand to the two moles above Sakusa’s eyebrow and watches his face relax slightly beneath it. “I’m here, with you, showing you how much I want you. Can’t that be enough?”

Sakusa’s stare is black and unreadable. “Make it enough,” he says.

✶

“Hey, Kunimi. Have you ever been in love?” Kageyama asks, once.

The two of them are laid out on the white sheets of Kageyama’s bed, watching the sunset’s low pirouette through floor-to-ceiling windows. Briefly, Akira thinks of two moles in parallel, and hands which hover over everything as if all the world’s a hot stove.

He blinks the image away. Kageyama’s hair is wild and tangled from Akira having run his fingers through them. His mouth is pink and slightly parted.

Kageyama looks at Tokyo’s glittering buildings. Akira looks at Kageyama’s mouth.

“No,” Akira says. “Why? Have you?”

Kageyama stays quiet for a moment, eyes still on the window. Just as Akira thinks to change the topic, perhaps crack a joke Kindaichi texted him earlier, Kageyama softly replies, “I hope not.”

Akira’s curious, but doesn’t ask him to explain himself. He’s still looking at Kageyama, so he sees the slight way his head tilts, how his eyes lower. Only Kageyama could make the magenta of a sunset look so melancholy.

Then Kageyama brings a hand up to brush stray bangs away from his eyes, and the spell breaks.

“Do you want me to cut your hair?” Akira asks, unthinking. Kageyama turns his head to look at him, finally, and Akira kind of wants to laugh at the surprise on his face.

“Do you know how to cut hair?” Kageyama doesn’t try to hide his skepticism. He hardly ever tries to hide, in general.

“Not really,” Akira admits, but he rolls onto onto his stomach and shifts closer to Kageyama. He brings a hand to Kageyama’s bangs and brushes through the length of them, gentle. Kageyama stills under his touch.

“Why offer, then.” Kageyama’s eyes flutter closed.

“It’s getting long,” Akira says, quiet, letting his fingers travel up from Kageyama’s bangs to comb through his scalp. His nails scratch softly. Kageyama sighs a little.

“My sister’s a hairdresser, you know.” Kageyama leans into the slow motions of Akira’s hand, like a cat. Akira keeps up a steady rhythm with his fingers.

“She’s not here though, is she?”

“I don’t trust you. You’ll make me ugly.” Kageyama frowns, and it’s cute.

“You could never be ugly.” It comes out before Akira can think to swallow it back.

At this, Kageyama’s eyes blink open. There’s a question in the blue of them. Akira doesn’t feel like answering, so he stills the motions of his fingers and starts to shuffle away. Before Kageyama could say anything else, Akira mumbles that he’s going to get some water, already up and leaving the room.

Akira half-fills a cup under the tap and leans against the counter. It’s reckless, reckless, saying things like that without expecting anything out of it. Akira takes a sip. He brings the cool cup up to his forehead.

_Don’t forget he’s leaving. Don’t trick yourself into thinking you’re anybody to him at all._

Akira leans back further and his elbow bumps into a shallow, glass tray to the side of it. Was it there before? Akira turns to study it, eyebrow raised.

From the small tray, he lifts a paper-wrapped salted caramel between his thumb and forefinger. Akira stares at it a moment. He unwraps the candy and puts it in his mouth.

* * *

_7\. We both already know that I’m good at making you feel good._

* * *

If intimacy’s a language, Akira burns every dictionary when it’s his body performing it. Akira still tries to make it enough. He offers Sakusa what he knows he can offer. He donates his hands. Gifts him his mouth. Offers the arch of his back like a sacrifice. Gives head like it’s a recital.

Akira’s gestures sometimes ring hollow like the limb of a bird and he knows Sakusa knows it. Akira puts constraints ‘round the wrists of love like it’s a prisoner and Sakusa knows this, too. What’s the use of a gifted mouth, anyway, when it doesn’t come with the right words? Not even honest words. What kind of person wants a mouth like that?

✶

Akira blooms red under the white of two thumbs drawing circles on his chest. They sweep over his nipples and his hips buck up. Kageyama’s lips and hands brush soft in a way that always feels like burning.

Hasn’t anyone warned Kageyama tenderness is just more give for the knife? Under attention like this, each touch is laceration. Akira opens beneath his devotion like a wound.

Some nights aren’t so soft at all. Some nights spit on holiness. Kageyama’s shaped like a deity and Akira draws near the burn of him. Akira himself: a wingless, fallen angel daring to seduce god. Bad Angel begs God to tighten the grip ‘round his throat. Bad Angel tells him, _hurt me_. God runs his nails down Bad Angel’s sides and takes him in his mouth like a sacrament. Bad Angel digs his teeth into the crook of God’s neck and speaks his name in vain, whispers, _fuck, god, you’re so pretty. You’re so fucking pretty._

Akira can tell from the heat in his gaze that Kageyama, too, gets turned on by their sacrilege. He steadies himself with a hand to Kageyama’s chest when he comes. Keeps his gaze on the blue of two lakes like a baptism. Tugs hard on black hair to tear apart his halo. Moans out a prayer of supplication.

* * *

_8\. You’re really hot. You think I’m hot, too._

* * *

Maybe there’s an art to forgetting to check that he’s beside you.

If Akira forgets to text Sakusa first, sometimes they go days, or a week, or two weeks without talking. Without seeing each other. It should be a shame, really, because Akira does think Sakusa’s quite handsome. He sees that handsome face less and less these days. But.

But Akira’s just— _so busy_. And Sakusa must be even more busy, with all the time that goes into juggling academics with being the ace of the college volleyball team. At some point the two of them become too busy to study together in their corner of the library, the one where they first met.

Existing with Sakusa beside him was easy. But that did nothing to change how easy it was, to just have nobody beside Akira at all. 

And so Akira doesn’t think anything’s wrong, when he sits to lay his books out on a bare table, no portable tablecloth in sight. Nothing seems unusual, when he walks between buildings and his footsteps thud alone. When Akira turns his head and no one’s there to speak to his first thought is not, _something—someone—is missing._

Then Sakusa calls him one day. Angry.

“You didn’t come to my game.”

“Oh.” Akira stops, putting down the pen in his other hand. “Was that today?”

“Yes, Kunimi. It was today. An important game, too. I texted you.”

“Ah. I’m sorry. I must have forgotten,” Akira says, frowning. “Did you win?”

“Does it matter to you?”

Akira doesn’t say anything.

“It’s kind of funny, really,” Sakusa continues to say on his end of the line. Akira stays quiet, letting him rant. “I was looking at this empty seat in the bleachers, and my first thought wasn’t even, _ah, it shouldn’t be empty. Kunimi should be sitting there._ I just didn’t think anything of it. Nothing at all. It wasn’t until later that I realized, oh, Kunimi’s not here. But it wasn’t even a shock. I turn my head around and it’s no shock that nothing’s there. You’re always somewhere else, Kunimi. You’ve conditioned me to your absence.”

✶

“You say these things a lot, after I win a game. Like, _let me congratulate you_ , or _here’s a way to celebrate,_ or something. And it always leads to—you _know._ It just makes me kind of wonder—“

Kageyama stops, averts his gaze downward. Atop a blanket stretched over the cherry hardwood of Kageyama’s living room floor, Kageyama sits cross-legged; Akira sprawls his legs out. There were more people with them, earlier. Old high school friends passing by Tokyo for a weekend. As these hangouts usually go, Kageyama’s apartment slowly emptied throughout night, until it’s past midnight already and only he and Akira are left.

“You kind of wonder?” Akira looks at him expectantly.

“Ah, never mind. It’s not important—“

“Kageyama.“

“Would you say that to anyone else?” It’s blurted out, and Kageyama flushes. He rubs the back of his nape with a hand. “Ah—do you say that to anyone else?”

Akira blinks at him. “Why are you asking this?”

“It’s just,” Kageyama starts, and there’s a kind of pained expression on his face. “Say Adlers lost to the Black Jackals, hypothetically. It’s not like you can use that line on me anymore, then. Would you be saying that to, I don’t know, Sakusa-san instead?”

“Sakusa-san?” Akira repeats in disbelief, immediately scrunching his up his face. “Why would I say that to my ex?”

“I don’t know, some people do that. Some people hook up with their exes.”

Akira stares at him a moment. “It’s none of my business, Kageyama. But I’d say the people around you are making terrible life decisions.”

“Oh?” Kageyama widens his eyes. He puts a thumb to his chin, thoughtful. “Hmm. I should probably pass that on to Tsukishima.”

Akira laughs, then, loud and startled. He can’t help it. “Tsukishima?” He gasps out, clutching his stomach as another string of laughter falls out of his mouth.

Kageyama isn’t laughing with him, and Akira can’t fathom _why not._ But when Akira calms enough to glance up at Kageyama, he’s blushing and looking at him with a strange, deer-in-headlights kind of expression.

“What’re you looking at?” It comes out in half a laugh, still, and Akira runs a finger below his eye.

“Nothing.” Kageyama averts his eyes, but the light blush remains. “But still. I’m just wondering what you’d do.”

“You’re asking me if I only fuck winners? Like my body’s just a trophy?”

“No! No—well,” Kageyama fumbles, blush deepening.

“You know, maybe I only use that line on you because you’re always winning, Kageyama.” Akira raises an eyebrow. “If you ever lose, that’s even better, honestly. You’d be all sad and mopey. I could kiss the tears off your eyelids and say, _hey, forget it, I know exactly what’ll make you feel better._ ”

“Oh,” is all Kageyama says.

“Or maybe you’d be _angry,_ ” Akira continues, smirking now. He leans in a little closer, lowering his voice. “Then I could just say, _calm down, Tobio. Later tonight, I’ll let you take all your frustrations out on my body._ ”

“Kunimi!” Kageyama shoves Akira away from him by the shoulder, pink and wide-eyed, and Akira laughs menacingly.

“You’re funny, Kageyama.” Akira leans back on his elbows, looking pointedly at him. “A line’s just a line. Who even wonders these things?”

“I don’t think it’s that weird,” Kageyama mumbles, still averting his gaze. “You’ve probably got other people. It’s not like we’re serious, or anything.”

 _Oh._ Akira’s so startled, he forgets to respond a moment. _Oh, Right._ Then, a thought that stings: actually, there are no other people.

 _No, just you,_ sits at the tip of his tongue. Akira swallows it back.

“Ah, of course,” Akira says instead, tilting his head up to the ceiling. “You can’t just assume professional athletes are my only type. I can be into people who don’t win _or_ lose. Not that I’ve been lately. But you never know.”

Akira bites his lip before he could add, _why, have you got other people?_ A head of orange hair flashes in the back his mind, but he quickly wills it away. He swallows the image and the question down, too, and they slide down his throat like something bitter. Akira’s surprised he doesn’t choke on it.

What comes out instead is, “There must be lots of pretty boys in Italy.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, I guess.” It comes out from Kageyama in a mumble. “But they’re not,” he starts to add, then lets the sentence trail off and dissipate. He still won’t look at Akira.

“That must be fun for you. You’re going so soon already, but the month probably can’t pass fast enough.” Akira winces at the slight bitterness running under his words. _God. Akira. Stop talking._

Kageyama doesn’t seem to notice it. “Not really. Actually, I was thinking—“ Kageyama starts, but seems to catch himself. He sighs a little, and Akira wishes he could decode the language in it. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”

“Alright.” Akira frowns at him.

“Alright,” Kageyama echoes, a little distant.

Akira can’t help but feel like he’s accidentally upset some delicate balance in the air between them. He leans back on his palms and tries not to think about the logistics of a month. The weeks and days that go into it. The hours that go into it, erasing themselves steadily.

But then, maybe if he thinks about _months_ repeatedly enough, the word might lose all its meaning. Just like how you start to feel unreal, when you repeat your name aloud too many times in front of the mirror. Month, month, month. Then maybe the days, and hours, and minutes that go into a month will become unreal, too.

Maybe there’s an art to defying time. It comes with endless intricacies, like the quick aversion of eyes from wall clocks, and unlocking the phone quick enough to bypass the screen’s white analog numbers. Ignoring the calendar app reminders on your notification drop-down. Looking away from the sunset. Sleeping past your alarm and waking up and pretending it’s not past 7 am, no, not yet. So you can keep your head on his chest, and listen to his breathing, and wonder who he’s dreaming about, and stare at the stillness of him just a little bit longer, just—a little. You can give yourself this much.

Maybe there’s an intimacy to defying time, too. Refusing to calculate it, as if this bittersweet rebellion will let you hold someone for longer.

 _What am I doing?_ Akira leans forward to run his hands through Kageyama’s hair and bites back a sigh of frustration. _What are you doing to me, Tobio?_

* * *

_9\. And we’ve been friends for so long, I can’t imagine this getting in the way of that._

* * *

Sakusa breaks up with him on a Tuesday.

There is no flair to it. No dramatics. They aren’t those kinds of people.

“Why?” Akira asks, but there’s not a lot of emotion in the way he says it. He frowns anyway.

“Because I feel nothing for you,” Sakusa says, with just the same amount of emotion.

Akira’s more offended than sad, even if the statement stings a little.

But—does it really sting? Does it, really? It’s not like Sakusa was the boyfriend of his dreams, either. Akira’s a little awed at his own lack of devastation. His boyfriend of five-or-so months is breaking up with him and he doesn’t feel anything. There should be an award for that, or something.

Still, Akira glares up at Sakusa. “You don’t have to say it like that.”

“At least I’m honest,” Sakusa replies, unbothered. “You have too many walls between what you say and what you mean. Everyone around you must be tired of climbing.”

Grimacing, Akira says, “That’s a very complicated metaphor, you know, for someone who prides himself on being direct and straightforward.”

For a moment there’s a flash of something in Sakusa’s stare that Akira tries to read. Then it’s swept up again into the blackness of his eye.

“Fine. Let me put it this way.” Sakusa takes a step toward him, and Akira wonders, distantly, how many people he’s allowed to occupy this much of his personal space. Then again, how many has Akira?

✶

Kageyama Tobio is leaving for Italy tomorrow and Kunimi Akira is not in love.

Kageyama’s leaving tomorrow, but he wants to spend his last full day in Japan visiting the shrines of Meiji Jingū with Akira, only Akira. Akira kind of wants to ask, _why me? Why not—_

He stops himself.

Kageyama buys a bundle of _osenko_ to share between him and Akira. They spend the afternoon burning the _osenko_ in a large incense burner, quietly praying for Kageyama’s safe travel.

Akira finds himself wanting to ask the gods for more. He lets this nameless, quiet want run through the tunnels of his body as he watches smoke rise up from the burner. Lets it run, as he watches Kageyama wave a hand over the _osenko_ to extinguish the flames, fanning the smoke toward themselves.

Akira isn’t usually one for wanting. Back in middle school, Kindaichi spent so much time thinking about _what-ifs_ and _maybes_ as their friendship with Kageyama fell apart. In first year high school, even, he confided in Akira how he wished to turn back the clocks. How he wants nothing more than to have said the right things, at the right time.

_God, I feel awful. What if I just told him how I felt, earlier. What if I was more honest about how he made me feel. What if I tried harder to hit his tosses. Maybe if I practiced harder I could've been good enough for him. Maybe if we were kinder. Maybe if we handled everything differently. We were so cruel, Kunimi._

_We shouldn’t have said what we said. We should have done things differently. Would we still be friends with him, do you think, if we said this to him instead?_

_I miss him. Don’t you ever miss him, Kunimi? Doesn’t it hurt, seeing him like that, with them instead of us?_

Akira watched how their other teammates approached a visibly distraught Kindaichi with pity in their eyes, and decided he wants none of that. He’d never let himself waste wishes on fruitless things like going back in time, to change something as stagnant as words already said, indelible on the scripts of history, of memory. Of course he’d never. Akira hates pity, but he hates self-pity the most.

Something about Kageyama makes Akira want to break all his own rules.

“Ah.” Akira sighs, then pats at his coat pockets for his pack of Peace cigarettes and a baby blue lighter. He and Kageyama finished visiting the shrines, and now meander the trails of its surrounding forest.

“Didn’t you say you only smoke when you’re drunk?” Kageyama watches Akira pluck a cig out of the pack and tuck it in the corner of his mouth. There’s no judgement in Kageyama’s voice. Just curiosity.

“Being drunk. Being with you. Same difference,” Akira says around the filter, smirking when it gets the flustered reaction he wanted out of Kageyama. He tries not to think too much about how much he means it.

“Ah. Kageyama, do you mind?” Akira holds out the lighter in Kageyama’s direction, tilting his head to the side.

Kageyama says nothing, but he takes the lighter from his hand and steps closer to Akira. There’s a little wind; Kageyama raises a hand to cover the lighter before flicking on the flame.

Kageyama’s so, so close. Akira watches him light the tip and draw away. It takes some restraint for Akira to keep himself from closing the distance again.

After a drag, Akira takes the cigarette from his mouth, exhales smoke, and flicks ash onto the ground. He holds it out in Kageyama’s direction. Akira’s half-joking; he knows how seriously Kageyama takes his own health.

But the usual _I’m an athlete_ response never comes. Kageyama reaches toward the cig and Akira just as quickly pulls it away.

“The fuck?” Kageyama looks thoroughly pissed off.

“You’re an athlete.”

“It’s one drag. And you offered.”

“No I didn’t.”

Kageyama glares at him some more, and Akira finally sighs. “Fine. But you’re getting it like this.” Akira pulls the burning cigarette to his lips and takes another, long drag. He keeps his eyes on Kageyama’s.

Akira leans closer to him with a hand on his shoulder and takes the cig out of his mouth. Kageyama’s eyes widen with silent understanding, mouth parting slightly. Akira presses his mouth to his and blows the smoke inside.

* * *

_10\. You always pick up the phone when I call, no matter how late into the night it is._

* * *

“I am tired of climbing, Kunimi.”

Akira cracks a smile. Wide enough to bare his teeth. Then he laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

✶

_“Ah, Akira—”_

Kageyama’s voice drifts from too-small phone speakers. Akira bites his lip, shifts the bend of his legs on the mattress.

It wasn’t the first time since Kageyama left a week ago, that they’ve done this.

“Let me hear more of you,” Akira sighs low into the phone, pressing it closer against his ear. 

There’s a hitch in Kageyama’s breath, morphed by 6,743 miles of distance into pitched, static fuzz. Even with so much lost in metallic translation, his voice is still sweet in Akira’s ear, mapped onto the memory of its sweeter, unfiltered sound.

Akira hears a soft swear, blurred at the edges by telephone distance. It’s almost too easy, Akira thinks, to undo Kageyama without even touching him.

He tries picturing how Kageyama might look right now—alone in his hotel room, moaning into a phone for someone far, far away to hear. Does he still bloom pink at his ears and down his chest, without anyone there to see him?

“I miss the faces you make, when you sound pretty like this.” Akira’s voice is quiet.

I just miss you, he doesn’t say.

 _“Yeah?”_ Kageyama’s voice comes out hardly intact from his end of the line. There’s a strained edge to his breath through the speaker. Akira imagines him flushed all over and adds pressure to his grip, gasping softly.

“Hmm,” Akira hums, voice going soft with thought. “And you looked so good above me. _Ah_ —the night before you left.” He lets his eyes flutter closed.

 _I want you near enough to see,_ Akira doesn’t say.

“I keep thinking about that night.”

_I’m never not thinking about you._

“I want you inside me again, _ah—_ ”

_Do you think about me, too?_

“I want to make you feel perfect again.”

_Do you also feel like you’ve lost something important?_

“ _Mm. ‘Kira, I’m close._ ” The way Kageyama sounds in his ear, breathless and a little shy around the shape of his name, empties Akira’s body of everything but lit-up nerves and a heartbeat, fluttering at his throat like the outline of a bird. Kageyama’s breath lapses over the phone and Akira bites his lip hard enough to hurt.

“Tobio, you’re always perfect.”

Come back.

“Come for me, please, soon.”

Hurry, hurry, hurry. Hurry back to me.

It’s not until the call’s long ended that Akira opens his eyes again, taking in his own room’s flat dark. Pale moonlight cuts in from the nearby window, its curtains half-way closed. It’s nothing near the size of the window overlooking the bed in Kageyama’s apartment. It lets in only a fraction of the same light.

* * *

_**+** 11: The body is the only conduit for intimacy you’ve ever cared to understand.  
_

* * *

_everything else eludes or betrays you. how big is your ego anyway, for you to think your boy-hands and boy-mouth were enough to keep him close?_

✶

_Hey, Kunimi. Have you ever been in love?_

The two of them sit up on Kageyama’s bed, Akira leaning back on two palms propped behind him. The sun performs a low pirouette through floor-to-ceiling windows, interrupting the whiteness of the room with wide spills of magenta. Kageyama’s hair is wild and tangled from Akira running his fingers through it. His mouth is pink and slightly parted.

Akira does not think of two moles in parallel, or hands which hover over everything as if all the world’s a hot stove. Instead, he thinks of two hands—calloused double-wielders of elegance and power—which laugh in the face of things like limitations, or bounds, or increments.

Outlined by the window’s light, Kageyama looks just like a rose-tinted memory, or a portrait, or a saint. Or the best kind of dream.

Kageyama does not look at Tokyo’s glittering buildings. He looks only at Akira. It’s all he’s ever done.

Akira looks at Kageyama back. He opens his mouth to speak.

**Author's Note:**

> the list was taken from the cafe scene from venus in taurus! please tell me y'all got that hahaha
> 
> thank you to everyone who commented on venus in taurus ♡ there were lots of times where i felt really stuck writing this and doubted myself, but then i'd find a comment in my inbox? and my mood instantly uplifted and i felt determined to write more! your kind and beautiful thoughts inspire me so much. i'm so grateful for you. i'd love to hear your thoughts on this one as well!!
> 
> shoutout to jo and eni for being the best ever n screaming abt kunikage w me everyday mwah


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